~ Standing up for Public Education

Monthly Archives: October 2016

Susan B. Anthony said, “No woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex.” That nonpartisan statement spoke volumes to the thousands of brave souls who fought fiercely, risking life and limb, to secure the vote for all of us. Anthony was arrested on Nov. 5, 1872, for voting. It wasn’t until 1920 that the 19th Amendment was ratified; making women’s voting rights the law of the land. Now this presidential campaign has laid bare a deep vein of misogyny that would have rocked our suffragette heroes to the core. Much work remains. – Kathleen Oropeza, Orlando Sentinel 100, October 16, 2016

It took 48 years from the time Susan B. Anthony was arrested for casting her vote for Ulysses S. Grant to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. She was not alone; women’s suffrage officially began in 1840, when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were barred from London’s World Anti-Slavery Convention, prompting them to hold a Women’s Convention in the United States. All told, the struggle for women’s suffrage took 80 years.

We must never forget that the vote was not guaranteed to women or people of color by the original U.S. Constitution. African Americans endured a terror-filled unjust civil and voting rights struggle that spanned 95 years from the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 to 1965 when Congress finally enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce rights for all African Americans.

Voting is the best way to thank all of those heroes who fought so hard for us. It’s how we breathe new life into such difficult victories.

When Susan B. Anthony died in 1906 at age 86, her funeral overflowed with mourners. Despite the fact that there was a blizzard raging in Rochester, New York, thousands packed into the church service and over 10,000 others showed up to pass by her flag-draped coffin and pay their respects. Yesterday, over a century later, admirers of the suffrage icon came to her grave with a different kind of tribute—dozens of “I Voted” stickers.

Rochester women have been coming to Anthony’s grave with flowers and stickers since at least 2014. One of them, Sarah Jane McPike, told The Huffington Post’s Caurie Putnam that the first year she voted, she brought flowers to Anthony’s grave. She isn’t the only one—as of 6:15 yesterday, the grave in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery was covered with two bouquets and at least 28 stickers. In a Facebook post about the tribute that is now becoming a tradition, Brianne Wojtesta wrote that the cemetery “has taken an official stance that they love this. It’s seen as a way of interacting with and honoring the legacy of one of their ‘permanent residents.’”

And what a legacy: Anthony fought for equality for women for over 60 years and laid the foundation for the legal right to vote that American women enjoy today. Not only did she encourage women to agitate for the vote, but she herself illegally voted and served time for her defiance.

Anthony’s espousal of temperance and abolitionism was controversial enough—but it was her die-hard insistence on women’s right to the vote that won her mockery and outright abuse during her lifetime. When she presented a petition that would have allowed women to own their own property and have custody of their children to the New York State Senate Judiciary Committee in 1856, she was openly ridiculed with a response that recommended the petitioners “apply for a law authorizing them to change dresses, so that the husband may wear petticoats, and the wife breeches, and thus indicate to their neighbors and the public the true relation in which they stand to each other.” Effigies of Anthony were given sneering mock funerals when she came to town. And she was often caricatured in the press as what one biographer called “an unattractive reject.”

But to Anthony, the right to vote was worth it all. “It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union,” she said in an 1873 speech. “And we formed it, not to give the blessings or liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government—the ballot.”

Anthony did help women in the United States win the vote—but it was granted to them 14 years after her death. For Anthony, who had devoted her entire life to the cause, this was a bitter pill to swallow. “To think I have had more than sixty years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel,” she said to a friend while on her deathbed.

For the women she helped enfranchise, a little sticker holds a lot of symbolism. Perhaps the tribute is a 21st-century version of the outpouring of love and emotion at Anthony’s funeral—an acknowledgment that, in the words of Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, who delivered Anthony’s eulogy, “there is no death for such as she.”

After years of devising and pushing legislation to disrespect and harm professional educators, Jeb Bush is going to “teach” at Harvard. The irony cannot be overstated. To be clear, Jeb is no teacher and this is no job.

Studies like this allowed Jeb and his friends to aggressively convince 18 states to implement mandatory third grade retention, despite overwhelming evidence that retention is a proven drop-out predictor.

So, PEPG has asked Jeb to deliver its 2016 Godkin Lecture as a “visiting” academic. This is just another effort by public education “reformers” to use the Harvard Kennedy School as a beard to promote a political agenda.

It’s essential to fully understand what Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance does. Far from an objective research center, PEPG is an ardent proponent of the Milton Friedman vision of privatization of public schools using vouchers, for-profit charters, and a vast array of vendors.

Predictable, recurring themes such as mandatory third grade retention, teacher evaluations, U.S students being unable to compete internationally, investing less on public education while expecting increased returns, class-size doesn’t matter and the ever-expanding push to digital learning are front and center.

Of course, once a “study” is released, PEPG boasts about all the media coverage. The only thing this proves is that, like many other institutions, the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance churns out thinly supported but well-timed reports to support a political objective. Often this “proof” is released to the media just prior to legislative session or a critical floor vote in the House or Senate.

So, PEPG is part of an enormous propaganda machine that Jeb and his school “reform” pals have been using for years. Using studies to manipulate and even harm the futures millions of children for political expediency is worse than bad. Calling yourself a “teacher” after working continuously to discredit and devalue the profession is a level of disrespect that knows no bounds.

Not Just the Problems of Other People’s Children – PEPG refutes the effects of poverty on student learning

The Public Turns Against Teacher Tenure – Celebrates Vergara ruling ending teacher tenure in California, which was overturned on appeal. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-rejects-bid-to-end-teacher-tenure-in-california-marking-huge-win-for-unions-20160414-story.html

The Education Spending Fog– PEPG dismisses the importance of investment in public schools

The First Hard Evidence on Virtual Education – PEPG builds the case that computers are just as good as human teachers. “The bottom line is that Florida high-school students taking algebra or English I online perform at least as well on state math and reading tests as do students taking the same courses in a traditional format.”

Public Schools and the Private School Voucher Threat – PEPG purports that school vouchers are good for public schools

Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School – PEPG uses NAEP and PISA to support argument that “better accountability, more school choice, and market-based teacher compensation and retention policies can, on the other hand, boost achievement without adding materially to school costs.”

Louisiana Voucher Program May Improve Racial Integration– PEPG position flies in the face of extensive evidence.

Teachers vs. The Public – Among the “findings”: public support for school vouchers for all students increases sharply when people are informed of the national ranking of student performance in their local school district. Support for charter schools and parent trigger laws also increases when the public learns the truth about local student performance.

New Digital Learning Policy Conference Hosted by PEPG – the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning, created in 2010 by the Digital Learning Council, co-chaired by former governors Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, providing the starting point for the conversation: Funding follows the student, Choice among multiple providers: Reducing costs without lowering quality, Fund achievement, not attendance and Federal, state and local roles in education

School Vouchers Help African Americans Go to College: Experimental Evidence from New York City– PEPG based its claims on prediction not longitudinal study: The study shows that an African American student who was able to use a voucher to attend a private school was 24 percentmore likelyto enroll in college than an African American student who didn’t win a voucher lottery

Reforming the Early Years of Schooling: Third graders benefit from retention – PEPG executive directorMartin R. West claims that: Florida’s policy of retaining third graders based on state standardized test scores has a positive long-term impact on those students.

Conference on Merit Pay: Will it work? Is it politically viable?Among PEPG findings: Neither academic credentials nor years of experience, after the initial few, are correlated with a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom.

EdNext-PEPG Surveyshows that, on many education reform issues, Democrats and Republicans hardly disagree –“proof” that the public completely favors all education reforms and believe there should be no exceptions for teachers regarding tenure.